Educational psychology is very widely understood and described ^as general psychology applied to education or adapted for teachers, Jin fact older textbooks on the subject deal with that part of general psychology which is of special importance to teachers. Because teachers have to deal with jpeople, albeit growing young people, an acquaintance with the general facts and principles of psychology was considered very essential for them. Child psychology had not yet found its feet and an understanding of child nature was reached by reducing the scale of adult psychology. Therefore the entire field of general psychology was considered useful for teachers.
Emphasis however was laid on certain topics of special interest to teachers. Since education was considered synonymous with book learning and acquisition of facts and information, such mental processes, as are involved in the acquisition of knowledge like perception, attention, memory and thinking, were presented in greater detail and against a background of educational practice.
The tradition is still prevalent though some of the newer textbooks have begun to emphasize topics like learning, measurement of intelligence or mental hygiene.
Even when both education and psychology have crown into large and independent disciplines, it is believed that educatio nal psychology is just an applied science in which principles of general applied to the practice of education or more specifically to the art of teaching.
The science of psychology has made tremendous progress during the last fifty years or more and such knowledge as is relevant and useful to those engaged in the work of educating the young should be made available to them in its educational applications.
While this is true it does not represent the whole truth. Tne science of educational psychology is no longer content with mere applications.
It is a special field of study in its own right. No doubt it is a special branch of psychology which investigates and studies the phenomena of educational growth and development.
Our knowledge of educational growth and development has made rapid strides during recent years and has expanded to such an extent as to constitute a separate and distinct study.
On the one hand, its researches and investigations have helped to reconstruct our educational ideas and programmes and on the other they have made a significant contribution to our understanding of human nature.
The activities of young people in the home, the school and the playground provide useful data for understanding many phenomena of inter-personal relationship.
The school-room situation provides unique opportunities for making experiments and studying processes of growth social adjustment.
A third approach is to provide in educational psychology Answers to specific practical problems which teachers usually come across in the course of their work in the school.
Such an approach will be very useful but it restricts the scope of educational psychology and if adopted will deprive the science of general psychology of the benefit of numerous academic investigations and studies being made in educational psychology. ^But educational psychology has its limitations.
A sound knowledge of the science does not necessarily ensure success in teaching for teaching is large ly an ar t and involves more than book knowled ge.
We are told teachers areborn and not made. It means that certain natural aptitudes are essential for success in teaching. Experience and ability to handle young, growing people are acquired only gradually. Again, science has its limitations and general psychology on which educational psychology is based is yet not so highly developed as some of the physical sciences.
A number of questions yet remain unanswered and to that extent educational psychology fails to help us in settling all educational problems. In dealing with persons and values educational psychology can at best provide a background for their analysis and understanding.
A knowledge of the limitation of the science on which we depend will challenge us to exercise our own judgement carefully and intelligently.
Education is generally defined as directed growth. It is a process or activity designed to produce desirable changes in the behaviour of human beings. Behaviour is not confined to just overt activity but any response or reaction of a person, any activity on the part of a person, whether of thinking, knowing, feeling, learning or doing is included in behaviour Writing, reading, solving a problem, talking to a friend or liking football or a pictorial magazine, all these responses or reactions are included in behaviour.
Some of them can be observed from outside such as reading or writing but likes and dislikes can be known only indirectly through inierencejgTo begin with, the child can make only a limited number of responses but in the course of his life and experience he learns many more. Not all of them are useful to him in meeting the needs and demands oi the pattern of life he is going to live when he has grown up. So he has to acquire those new ways of behaviour which will help him in making desirable adjustments to his environment.
Education tries to provide those experiences and opportunities in which the child will effectively learn new and useful rcsponsesdln the nursery school infants are helped with material and toofs to learn, to do a number of simple things like manipulating coloured blocks of wood, to learn to distinguish between a variety of shapes and colours, to pick, throw, push or pull them, learning a number of simple skills like holding things, swinging, running, see-sawing, climbing, slipping and acquiring knowledge of things, persons and situations.
In the primary school the areas of learning, of acquiring knowledge and skill are further extended with the help of tools of reading, writing and computing. And with each succeeding stage the learning situations increase in complexity calling forth more complicated responses and providing opportunities for new and elaborate learning.
The process of education is designed to promote and facilitate such learning, and since human behaviour is very complex and the number of responses a man is capable of is very large, the school as the chief agency of the educative process must make provision for a large variety of experiences and influences to arouse and develop a large variety of responses.
These responses are capable of modification and growth in a large variety of directions. In the course of his education an individual is constantly abandoning old ways of behaviour and learning new patterns.
Growth and development are an inevitable factor, and Mohan behaved toward his books and teachers differently at the ages of six, nine and fifteen.
These differences are differences of growth. Each response affects the subsequent responses, and all previous experience have a cumulative effect on subsequent experience and behaviour.
The changes that come about as a result of these responses and experience at any given stage affect the individual and his behaviour as a whole, that is, his personality is not what an individual starts with but what he gradually and slowly acquires in the course of his life and experience. The changes in behaviour patterns brought about by the educative process are changes in human personality. Personality is the complex system of behaviour that is acquired and changes in the system of behaviour are changes in personality.
Education is also considered as a process of socialization, a process by which young people are prepared to live in a society. While socialization is a lifelong process consistent with religious, economic, moral and other values, every culture has a plan to induct children into the mores of the society in which they will have to live when grown up and change the human raw material into a special type of person needed to make their society live and run. Young people must be taught the ways of behaving that will help them to be accepted and assimilated into adult groups.
Lately, social patterns have grown complex and are rapidly changing. On the one side, the need of rapid adjustment to social forms is urgent, on the other side there is an increasing dependence of individuals on one another. In the task of socialization the school is not the only factor. There are other institutions making sure that every one is socialized, for example, the family, the market, the radio, the newspaper, the cinema, the church.
But the role of the school is more important partly because it assumes responsibility for important fundamental learnings in the field of knowledge and skill, reading, writing and arithmetic and several other types of information and understanding without which adult life is not possible, and partly because its work if intelligently and thoughtfully designed and directed, serves to correct, compensate and complete the socializing influence of other institutions.
How many children acquire habits and ways in the home and the market which are not desirable and are corrected in the school.
But whether the emphasis in education is on behaviour, personality or socialization, the essential element in the entire educative process is the individual, the human organism on w T hich all influences and experiences are concentrated. He is the subject of education and it is his personality that is being formed and changed.
What he is, what his abilities and aptitudes are, how he behaves and learns, what the general principles underlying his behaviour and growth are, what factors influence his growth and learning, how the various types of learning are to be measured and evaluated are questions of great importance to education, and they are the main concern of the science of psychology. That is why psychology is considered basic to education.
Being a study of human behaviour and describing how human beings conduct themselves in various situations, what their organic and emotional needs are, what principles govern the growth and development of their behaviour, how knowledge and skill are acquired, what makes learning most effective and the like, psychology cannot but have a profound effect on the objectives, programmes, methods and techniques of education and teaching.
Why do different children of the same parents brought up in the same family develop into different persons? Why do some children learn quickly while others take a long time to master simple things? At what age should children study mathematics? What programmes should a high school have for retarded children? How should very bright children be taught? What are the common emotional problems of adolescents? How do children pampered at home fare in the school? These and scores of other questions arise in the minds of teachers in /the course of their work and though psychology has no specific readymade answers to offer, an acquaintance with the facts and principles of psychology will suggest sounder ways of dealing with the problems.
A knowledge of psychology has suggested several helpful techniques and methods of teaching and solving educational problems and difficulties besides testing and assessing the effectiveness of several techniques and methods in practice.
Psychology may not be able to indicate clearly what to teach and how to teach, but'it provides reliable scientific knowledge about the people taught and helps to avoid many errors in dealing with them. Numerous testing devices and tools help the teacher to identify pupils of varying degrees of intelligence, to know about their abilities and aptitudes, their achievements and personality traits, and to appreciate their handicaps as well as strong points in learning.
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